Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Are You A “Rigorous” Teacher?

Steven Cromack

“Rigorous” is one of the most
commonly used words in education these days. In their profiles, many
schools—public, private, parochial, charter, institutions of higher
learning—claim to be “rigorous.” Teachers and professors claim to be or have a
reputation for being “rigorous.” But what on Earth does that word actually mean? What does it mean to be a
“rigorous” teacher?

In Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools
(Jossey-Bass, 2006) Tony Wagner et al. explore whether rigor is about content
or teaching, or both. They conclude that there are common elements between
content and instruction, but ultimately, the definitions of rigor are
ambiguous. While each educator must make sense of rigor for himself or herself,
Change Leadership suggests ways to
help teachers understand rigor better. Rigor is not “simply about students
being given more or harder work. Rigor is about what students are able to do as
a result of the lesson.” The state of Virginia requires students to memorize
ninety-two natural elements. But, what good is such information if the students
do not understand the scientific method behind Mendeleev’s Periodic Table? In
contrast, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts do not earn merit badges through
memorization and test taking. Instead, they need to develop a plan and execute
it, and the end result is a hands-on service project, the sum of everything
they have learned.

In other words, the
drill-and-grill exercise of memorize, regurgitate, and repeat is not only
unrigorous, but also an inadequate method of instruction. A student who
performs outstandingly on the state’s standardized test because of
drill-and-grill methods of instruction might well not understand the deeper
meanings behind raw data. There is no point to knowing random facts unless you
appear on Jeopardy. Albert Einstein insisted that, over time, facts
fade, but education remains. Woodrow Wilson called this the “spirit of
learning,” the idea that every day, students experience something new about themselves and their world that
enhances daily living. For, in the end, learning is a lifelong process, no
matter one’s profession.Are you a rigorous teacher? Well,
if you are pushing students to think about the deeper meaning behind the content
and providing them with opportunities to develop and execute their own
intellectual projects, then perhaps the answer is yes. How a teacher chooses to
be rigorous may vary from classroom to classroom, and from school to school.

3 comments:

Interesting post, Steve. I've been thinking a lot lately about who gets rewarded in history, and I suppose the same thing may apply to the classroom. Regardless of what social or educational standards we profess, students are smart enough to see who's getting the big pay-offs. This is slow to change, and isn't necessarily under the control of people like yourself who want to address the problem. Of course, that's not an argument against trying to address the problem...

This is interesting -- for history, such an approach would seem to emphasize methods and skills just as much as content and analytical thinking, if only for the culmination of a semester's work into a worthwhile research project.

Wow, this is a tender subject--thanks for bringing it up. We all want to be rigorous, but who is the judge and so often parents and students equate a lot of work with rigorous. Ultimately, it all needs to be able to pass the "so what?" question. Nice assessment of this all-too-often overused description.